18 thoughts on “The American Patriot’s Gospel”

I honestly believe if you lived in this country, you would be singing a different tune. It is totally ok to have an opinion that differs from yours in regards to, gun control. We don’t have to like the president, and we have the right as anyone else does to express our views regarding such. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else, than here in America, but I don’t worship this country, and I don’t believe the people your talking about do either. We just have different opinions. Some of these people happen to be Christians, should that be held against them if they are proud to be Americans or are patriotic? This artist who painted the flag on a Bible, will really I don’t know if he heard from Yahwah on that one? Personally I wouldnt’ have torn up a Bible to do it, but I don’t judge him for expressing his opinion, even through I am not fond of it. In all of these posts you’ve written about Christians being patriotic, I can’t help but sense your harboring a grudge, or resentment of some type towards American Christians. Does it bother you, that we are able to express our opinions, are willing to fight for our rights, and live in a free country?

Do I harbour a grudge against Amercian Christians? No – I just abhor the false religion being followed by so many who claim to be Christians. A false religion that tags God onto the fringes of Nation worship.

And no you don’t have to like your President – but that doesn’t mean that any Christian has the right to resort to lies about the president to express that dislike.

And what “rights” do you have that God requires you to fight for?
The only right ALL of mankind has is the right to death and punishment. Thank God for His mercy so we can be free of our rights.

Martin, conditioning runs deep. All of the hand-on-heart flag saluting is ingrained from such a young age most Americans can’t see what any non-American can about their attitude to nation. It certainly is dangerous when a Christian veneer is added to that Nationalism and God is press-ganged into being a national mascot.

Maybe the best thing that happened to me as a child was that I was torn from my English roots and transplanted in foreign soil. It eventually gave me a different perspective to the one I may have had if I’d remained in Britain. I got to see the weaknesses of two nations – enough to make me realise that neither are God’s chosen land.

I live in Australia and I enjoy Australia – but perhaps too much. I wonder how many of the “freedoms” and “blessings” we enjoy are in fact the weeds and thorns that eventually choke the fruitfulness out of the spiritual crop we should be producing.

I think, if America didn’t make such a business of exporting it’s nationalistic brand of religion it would be much less an issue for the rest of us. The fact is, American nationalism and it’s supporting totem, is beamed across the world, stuffed onto radio and TV, not the mention the internet and print media.

Yet, when questioned, Americans become so defensive and slip back into lush words such as freedoms, rights and guns.

Rather worrying when we’re here talking of the Kings kingdom, allegiances not to this world etc.

In reality, although the US claims to have spread the “gospel” to almost the ends of the earth so we can “hurry up and MAKE Jesus come back, it is without a doubt “another gospel” that Paul warned about.

Now that the US has spread this false gospel throughout the world, REAL Christians will now have to go and spread the REAL gospel whereever our evangelists have travelled….

Martin, I think that external influence is something some Americans don’t seem to understand when they insist that outsiders keep out of American business. They don’t realise how much America and American culture can’t be escaped in the rest of the world. Therefore things that happen in America are NOT exclusively American issues.

Revelation 18:3 For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth have become rich through the abundance of her luxury.”

I know Ones doesn’t believe that the US is Babylon but the signs are all there…..

I beg to differ Unprofitable, Dispensationalism is the understanding of the Bible which delivers the answer most are still seeking. It’s the Jewish way of understanding the Scriptures, and it is a Jewish book, mostly about the Children of Israel. Gentiles, therefore, have no grounds on which to usurp the ownership of the Bible and translate/expound it as they think fit. It only leads to error and Godlessness.

Onesimus, according to my observations, Americans understand that which suits them and their purposes, and none other. You may have guessed I’m not greatly enamoured of them; if they hadn’t rebelled and broken away (rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft) they would have at the very least a modicum of civilisation.

In view of so many press comments and forum comments from Americans in the run up to the election, I’m left wondering if the mass of them actually votes according to conscience and the good of the nation or vote for what the nation will do for them?

Martin,
Only one aspect of Dispensationalism relates to Israel, and that is that God hasn’t finsihed with them and would return them to their land.

Unfortunately their view on Israel goes further than that and separates Israel entirely from the church in eternity, with the church being in heaven and Israel being on earth. There is no such division in scripture.

The majority of Dispensationalist beliefs are false, the most well known being a pre-trib rapture.
Dispensationalism divides history into a number of dispensations in which God deal with mankind in different ways. We are now supposed to be in the “dispensation of grace”.
This of course IS a phrase in scripture, but it does not denote a time period of grace (as dispensationalists see it). Instead it refers to the dispensing or ISSUING of grace, in the same way we can refer to the dispensing of provisions from a store. And God has been dispensing grace throughout human history.

Martin,
If Americans “understand that which suits them and their purposes, and none other” it perhaps because there is a lot of ignorance of so much outside of America. They are conditioned throughout their lives to see their nation as the greatest – not suprisingly that attitude tends to make so many “Christians” also see America as the nation in greatest need of God’s judgement.

Those verses of scripture are totaslly irrelevant and have nothing to do with the future of Israel as God’s chosen nation, or the promises made to them that are still to be fulfilled.

Dispensationalists at least recognised God’s continuing relationship with the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when the rest of the church had fallen for the lies of replacement theology. But unfortunately, due to their other doctrines, they came up with a false understanding of how God’s promises would be fulfilled.

Meanwhile, I have just now received a package in the mail from my mother with a FFCOALITION piece of junk DVD (oh, the joys of Reed, McDonnell, Gingrich, Huckabee, Beck, and Walker — at least I’m clued in that Rubio is stupid enough to plaster his face on propaganda put out with these people). Too “bad” I read my Bible (and went to Christian schools in the seventies with a sober chapel gathering every morning in high school and every Friday in middle school and faith classes all along), I’ll never again be able to agree with her because she is stubborn and self delusional while I was able to find my way out of that stuff she pushes. It’s not entirely surprising, as she has always (during my life anyway) been manipulative and dishonest and the type who lays heavy burdens and turns around like it wasn’t her (the “blame” is on me, apparently for being her child, and anyone else she chooses to throw into the path).

I’ll give a couple relatively minor examples and one major example (and there are many in between that I won’t get into). She is the type of person who wrote a note to exempt me from sex ed in school (even at my Christian school) and wouldn’t answer question I asked of her; but she later acted like “shame on me” for not knowing a bit of sexual anatomy (like she was ashamed I didn’t know this fairly minor thing, but that it would be entirely my fault). Yet, she did this same kind of shaming thing when I used a word she decided was incorrect grammar when I was about thirty and the mother of multiple children already who I was home educating (she was an elementary school teacher for pay); my grammar was NOT incorrect. I’d said I had “woken” rather than “woke up” — a bit like the teacher across the street who told my son “spat” (past of “spit”) is not a word. Okay, I’ll slip in one more minor illustration before the one major one I’m going to touch on. I was once reminiscing about when I was sick as a child and my mother would give me tea and toast. Somehow, aspirin came up — still as a positive (because it was something she did as a good thing in those days). She started denying she would have ever given me aspirin (because, in the intervening years, it has been discovered that sick children should not be given aspirin). I assured her I knew that doctors told mothers to give aspirin then. But, no, there was just no way she would have given aspirin — although she did.

Now I turn to a matter involving my cousin who is like a sister to me. She became pregnant while we were both teens. I was already married (long story again involving my mother), but my cousin was not married. I didn’t live in town (that city we grew up in) any more and knew nothing of this (my cousin had become distant during her high school years). I had been raised to be against abortion; it was one hundred percent wrong. My mother had sent me to Christian political camp (two summers) and more to make sure I knew this. I only found out about my cousin years later (and after the decision in her case was to go for an abortion). My mother defended this choice (of my cousin’s mother and probably with the “encouragement” of my mother for her twin sister’s point of view, not my cousin’s choice) as the best for my cousin. No, I said, I could have adopted the child if anyone had told me anything. This argument went on for years, decades — no, you’re wrong, Mom; if abortion is wrong, it’s wrong. Not only that, but my cousin began telling me she wished she could have a child (while I don’t think she knew I knew that she’d had an abortion). She was not married and had no prospects (though the family put pressure on her to find a man). She considered artificial insemination. Now, cut to the summer after the Anthony trial. My mother, on a holiday, brought up that the young mother should have been found guilty and put to death. She added (completely impertinently except that it would be a ping) that the child could have been put up for adoption. Here I am sitting with my cousin who I know regrets her abortion (chosen for her) and my mother rubbing it in. I said, “I don’t think it’s that simple.”